Well!  Wrapping up another year – here we go.  We’re a couple of weeks into 2018 now, but it always takes me all of January to get through my posts looking back on the last year, especially when it comes to books and reading.  2017 was another banner year for me in books – no matter what else may change, or how crazy life may get, books are always my refuge, so I guess it makes sense that I read as much as I did in 2017.  Here’s how my numbers are looking, now that I’ve closed the book (sorry) on the year.

Just the Facts, Ma’am

Looking at the numbers alone, it looks like I read 102 books this year – which is a pace of juuuuuuust a hair under two books per week.  That sounds about right to me.  It was a busy year, full of travel, parenting and work stress, so it seems that no matter what I do, I come out around 100 books in a year.  That seems to be the sweet spot.

 

My longest book, clocking in at 904 pages, was Middlemarch, by George Eliot (which I actually listened to on audiobook this time around, although I have read it in print, in the past).  My shortest book, at a slim 46 pages, was Simplify, by Joshua Becker.  Funnily enough, Simplify was also the first book I read in 2017.  It’s a good New Year’s book.

Pie-Oh-My

One of my favorite exercises to do at the end of a year (or beginning of a new year) is look back over all of the books I read in the previous year.  It’s always fun to see where I began, where I went, and where I ended – and of course, to relive a list of wonderful books.

Fiction/Non-Fiction

Always the easiest place to begin.  As always, I was a big fiction reader this year – that never changes.  72 fiction to 28 non-fiction – more than twice as much.  Non-fiction represented a little more than a quarter of my reading this year, which – again – is pretty consistent for me.  What did change is that I read two books of poetry this year!  I considered placing them in the non-fiction category, but they didn’t quite fit there, so I’ve got a new category on this graph this year.  I hope it’s a bigger sliver of the pie in 2018.

Format

Unsurprisingly, I was heavily into physical books this year – always am.  I don’t have a particular prejudice in favor of physical books; they just tend to be what I pick up.  And when you consider that the comics/graphic novels (only three this year, which is a departure from the past couple of years) and journals that I read this year are also physical objects, that’s even more.  I did read more electronically this year – five audiobooks and eleven ebooks – than I have done in the past, which is interesting.  (Despite what this chart may look like, I don’t place a value on reading physical books or reading electronically, so I have no 2018 goals in either direction.  I gravitate more toward physical books because I can’t read on my phone, as many ebook readers do – too much time looking at my phone screen gives me debilitating headaches.  My kindle doesn’t have the same effect, so most ebooks I’m reading are completed with that device.)  The one thing that I really like is that it appears I read across a number of different formats – including two journals – this year.  I’d like to keep that up, and to read more journals and more comics, in 2018.

Source of Book

As usual, I was a heavy library user this year.  Reading 102 books in a year, I guess I have to be – or I’d break the bank.  (Plus there was Project 24 to contend with this year – I only bought 24 books for myself all year, and while that may seem like a lot to some people, I am confident that here, among my kindred spirits as I am, you all are praising my fortitude and forbearance.)  The change was that I was actually not as heavy of a library user as I have been in the past.  While library books still made up the bulk of my reading this year, Audible (I have a membership) and Kindle (thanks to Modern Mrs. Darcy‘s daily ebook deals emails) chipped away at the graph, and I also made an effort to read from my own shelves.  I have a lot of beautiful editions of classics that I’m hoping to finally get to in 2018, so that number will – I am optimistically predicting – grow even more in 2018.

Fiction Genres

Now comes the fun part – getting into the weeds a bit more.  Starting with fiction genres – I was thrilled to see that I read 22 classics this year; by far the biggest chunk of all the fiction genres.  Literary fiction, clocking in at 16 books, was also a big category for me (it always is) but I love to see classics top the chart.  Mystery is usually a reliable genre for me, too, and six books is respectable.  As for the rest, I was dabbling all over the place this year, and it shows in small numbers over a bunch of categories – one short stories, one romance, two historical fiction – you can see.  This chart is pretty normal for me, and for 2018 I’m predicting an even heavier weight toward classics, since I’m feeling very drawn to them at the moment (could this tumultuous national atmosphere have anything to do with that, I wonder?).

Nonfiction Genres

I was really surprised to see so many memoirs.  I had no idea that genre interested me as much as it does.  Part of it, I think, is the grey area of classification – for instance, I put both Hillary Clinton’s What Happened and Alyssa Mastromonaco’s Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? into the memoir category, but either or both could have fit into the politics category just as neatly.  The discretion and judgment calls involved in assigning categories do sometimes result in one category getting weighted, and I think that’s what’s happening here.  But expect to see a heavy memoir year in 2018, too, because I’ve been stockpiling Slightly Foxed Editions, and those are all classic-but-forgotten memoirs.  Another one to file in the non-surprise category – five books about politics!  (And that’s leaving out Hillary and Alyssa, as noted.)  Usually I lump politics, history and social science into one category; this year, I read so many that I ended up breaking them apart.  Again – I wonder if the tumultuous national atmosphere has anything to do with that.  I’m sure I’m not the only one turning to books to make sense of what’s going on.

Settings

Always a fun one to review!  No surprise here – England and the USA were by far my two biggest categories.  They’re usually fairly close to even, but this year, the USA pulled way ahead.  I’m guessing that was at least partially due to the heavier slate of political books and political memoirs, but I don’t think that can totally explain it.  I’m going out on a limb and speculating here, but I also was actively seeking out books about the African-American and immigrant experiences, as part of my effort to read diversely, and that may have inflated the USA total as well.  Other items of note – four books set in multiple settings, and funnily, two of those were evenly divided between Italy and England (who’d have thunk?).  Also, I read a book set in outer space – Octavia Butler’s Dawn, which takes place entirely aboard an alien spaceship.  Wild stuff.

Diverse Voices

In 2017, I set the goal to read at least 33% diverse voices (which I sketchily defined as including racial minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, and underrepresented religions, or a combination thereof).  That goal doesn’t quite get me to 33% people of color (which is the American population, roughly) because some of the categories – like LGBTQ+ and underrepresented religions – can and do include white writers.  But I like the number 33% because I think it’s a serious goal.  (Note: I didn’t actually set a number or percentage goal for 2018, but I am still paying attention and actively seeking out diverse books.)  Anyway, the chart above shows how I did – and it’s good.  For the second year in a row, I exceeded 33% of my booklist being devoted to diverse books.  At 40 books out of a total of 102, I came in at about 39.6%, and I am really pleased with that.  Some of the best books I read this year were by diverse writers and writers of color – like Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng, and The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas – and I don’t know that they would have come my way if I hadn’t been actively seeking them out.  That effort is the thing, and it’s so important.  I don’t say that to congratulate myself – goodness knows I have room to improve – but to point out that it’s easy to fall into a pattern of not seeking out diverse books.  This is a problem in publishing.  It shouldn’t require planning and legwork and commitment by the reader to track down and obtain these books; they are compelling stories told in great prose and they deserve a lot more exposure.

Diverse Groups

Final pie chart – a bit more detail on my diverse reading efforts.  Consistent with 2016, African-Americans and African Diaspora authors were the largest group.  This is unsurprising, because I try particularly hard to seek out those stories.  I also read a lot of Asian and Asian-American authors this year, and really enjoyed the time I spent with them (Kevin Kwan and Celeste Ng, I’m looking at you).  One thing that disappointed me?  My LGBTQ+ number, which I’d like to see a lot higher.  (It’s not as bad as it looks, though.  Both of the books that I classified as “multiple” diverse groups were from LGBTQ+ authors, who also happened to be people of color.  But five LGBTQ+ authors is still not enough.)  A pleasant surprise was my Native American total, although six of those seven books were Louise Erdrich novels.  I’d love to keep growing there, so please, hit me with your best Native American/Native Canadian/First Nations recommendations.

So – there it is!  A year in reading, broke down in the nerdiest way imaginable.  I had a good bookish year, if you couldn’t tell from the above.  Lots of laughter, lots of thought, some tears, and quite a few new fictional friends.  And now – onward to 2018, which I hope will be a banner year for both classics and diverse books.

Did you have reading goals in 2017?  How’d it go?